January 2018 – RFMRC-SEA

Indonesia unveils plan to halve forest fires by 2019

by Hans Nicholas Jong on 29 December 2017

JAKARTA – The Indonesian government has unveiled an ambitious plan to nearly halve the number of fire hotspots in the country by 2019, in part through the restoration of degraded peat forests.

The fires are an annual occurrence, linked to the clearing of forests for logging and monoculture plantations. In recent years the problem has been exacerbated by the draining of peat swamps, which leaves them highly combustible.

Under the new plan revealed Tuesday by the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy, the government aims to tackle the fires through a two-pronged approach.

First is ensuring that the 24,000 square kilometers (9,266 square miles) of degraded peat areas slated to be restored by Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency (BRG) are not burned. Second is boosting prevention efforts in 731 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, identified as being historically prone to fires.

In all, the plan calls for the protection of 121,000 square kilometers (46,718 square miles) of land, which, if kept successfully free of fire by 2019, will reduce the anticipated number of hotspots by 49 percent compared to business-as-usual levels.

Reed more Indonesia unveils plan to halve forest fires by 2019

Economy Forest Fire RFMRC-SEA

Singapore and the Smoke Haze Crisis

Vol. 53, Issue No. 3, 20 Jan, 2018

The 2013 and 2015 episodes of smoke haze over Singapore were some of the worst environmental crises in the nation’s history. Severe haze caused by land clearance fires in Indonesia blanketed Singapore for more than a month each time, leading to a dramatic shift in public attention and policies regarding the nation’s engagement with its neighbouring resource-extractive economies. This article reads the development of this crisis through the myth of the “air-conditioned nation,” arguing that it presents an opportunity to reconnect capitalism and regionalisation with their consequences.

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Forest Fire Global International RFMRC-SEA

Forest fire risk assessment using hotspot analysis in GIS

This article by Dr. El-Said Mamdouh Mahmoud Zahran et al. is published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal, Volume 11, 2017

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

The recent forest fire incidents are becoming a major concern as they seriously threaten the environment, economy and human’s safety. This research study aims to figure out forest fire hotspots using advanced hotspot analysis in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Further, it can help propose appropriate preventive measures using Site Suitability and Network Analyses in GIS. The study focuses on Brunei Darussalam because it is increasingly struck by forest fire incidents among all regions in Southeast Asia.